David’s view
As they prepared for Republicans to drop another billion dollars of ads on their heads this summer, Democrats passed around fresh advice on gender politics.
A memo from the Transgender Freedom Alliance, based on focus groups and polling in battleground states, warned that Democrats lost ground if they ignored anti-trans attacks — ubiquitous GOP ads about “boys in girls’ sports” and “child sex changes.” The group advised Democrats to respond, then accuse Republicans of being “focused on transgender people instead of helping you.”
Right now, as they compete for states that Trump won by double digits, Democrats are feeling great about that guidance. Former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown used it nearly word-for-word for one of his ads: “With everything going on, that’s what they’re talking about?” New ads from a Democratic super PAC chide Republicans for running hundreds of millions of dollars in ads “just about trans people.”
The theory is simple. In 2024, when the Trump campaign warned that Kamala Harris was for “they/them,” the subtext was that Democrats were focused on identity politics instead of economic needs. In 2026, voters can’t blame the out-of-power party for the cost of groceries; it’s MAGA Republicans who are obsessed with “they/them,” not “you.”
I’ve seen some analysis of the Democrats’ enough-already messaging that calls it a “new” strategy. It’s not totally new; Brown lost his 2024 race after running ads about how he opposed letting “transgender biological men” play women’s sports, which was already “banned in Ohio.”
What’s new is that conservatives won, and their opponents retreated. The Trump administration has rolled back every significant executive-branch advance for transgender Americans — in healthcare, in schools, even at historic sites. In red states, the limits that Republicans passed during Biden’s presidency are in no danger of being overturned.
Pro-LGBTQ rights groups, now aware of how much they lose when Democrats don’t run things, aren’t saying much about the new Democratic approach.
Iowa’s Rob Sand, who became the party’s nominee for governor with no primary challenge, wrote the first page of that new book. Last summer, he told a conservative radio host that state policy on women’s sports was “settled law.” In Ohio, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton went the same way.
Neither candidate rolled out their position with a PR campaign. They were asked, they answered, and they weathered criticism from LGBT groups. The impact was less than Republicans had hoped. Equality Ohio, the state’s flagship LGBT rights group, announced that Acton had lost her “A” rating and it would have to revisit its candidate report card.
With less fanfare, after Action held closed-press meetings with frustrated activists, it published the new report card. Acton had been downgraded to a “B,” while GOP nominee Vivek Ramaswamy’s “F” rating stood. The nominee isn’t going to be flying that B up a flagpole, but it’s a minor hit to take in order to neutralize one of the GOP’s most frequent attacks.
Those attacks are missing something else: Fresh outrage to draw on. In his 2024 campaign, the most frequently named target of Trump’s riffs on the issue was Lia Thomas, the transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer who won a 2022 women’s freestyle event.
Thomas wouldn’t be allowed to compete in that race if it happened this year, because the NCAA responded to the Trump administration’s gender orders by barring anyone “assigned male at birth” from women’s sports.
That’s not what Democrats wanted in 2024. But it’s what they have now, and there’s been a lot of thinking about how to stem their losses. Mara Keisling, the transgender rights activist whose interview with Harris was churned into the “they/them” ad, wrote in March that the movement “should concentrate on issues we can win and temporarily defocus on issues we cannot.” Namely, sports.
In The Hard Path to Unity, Barney Frank’s posthumous book about resuscitating the left, he had the same parting advice. “Advocates of allowing people who transitioned from male to female to compete in women’s sports should continue to argue their case, but refrain from making it a litmus test,” he wrote.
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Room for Disagreement
Republicans aren’t cutting back any of their transgender-focused ads, despite the conventional wisdom that they’re not working as well this year. In a memo last week, the conservative American Principles Project warned that the ads “may not be sufficient” if not hitched to a credible economic message.
“If the candidate has a record that’s problematic on trans, it’s still a good hit,” APP president Terry Schilling told Semafor. “If I’m a Republican running for office right now, I’m saying: ‘Hey, I had Trump’s back. We kept our promises on protecting your kids and protecting rights as parents when it comes to the trans industry.’ Look at all that we’ve done!”
And the attack ads aren’t stopping; Brown’s Ohio ads got a response from Republicans, returning to their 2024 theme that by voting against GOP gender legislation, he offered his real position.
Notable
- In The Washington Sun, Alex Roarty and Oriana Gonzales talked to strategists in both parties about why the ad barrage was not getting the same results now that it got in 2024.
- In The Nation, Gillian Branstetter wondered whether the 2024 results were a “fluke,” noting that ads on the same themes flopped in Virginia last year, as now-Gov. Abigail Spanberger said that the state should not be writing rules for something parents and athletic organizations could handle.
- On the Human Rights Campaign’s Substack, Kelly Robinson assessed Brown and other Democrats trying to defuse the GOP attacks with concessions. “When there’s a misstep, our first step is a call. We provide information and advice. More often than not, campaigns express remorse and solidarity and work to clean it up.”